Save The Desert National Wildlife Refuge

Nevada Congressional Delegation

I respectfully ask that you do everything in your power to remove the Desert National Wildlife Refuge rider found in H.R. 1735, Sec. 2842(b) from the National Defense Authorization Act. The Air Force now wants full jurisdiction for more than half of the refuge, more than 800,000 acres – when will this military take-over stop? This is not the place or time for such a controversial issue to be resolved.

The Desert National Wildlife Refuge is the largest refuge in the contiguous United States. Encompassing six major mountain ranges and nearly 1.6 million acres in Nevada, it provides the highest quality, intact habitat for desert bighorn sheep and other wildlife that depend on Great Basin and Mojave Desert ecosystems. With the exponential growth of Las Vegas over the past decades right up to the refuge boundary, this haven for wildlife is critical. It needs to stay under the primary jurisdiction of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.